


Amor Fati

by ecotone



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Time Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-16
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-12-30 14:20:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12110589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecotone/pseuds/ecotone
Summary: A million paths, a billion Whens and Wheres and What-ifs.She walks and charts them all.





	Amor Fati

Time opens like a flower, like one of the bright blooms in the Vex’s infinite gardens. 

She steps, and the flower wilts, red petals turning red-brown turning brown-black. Another step, and the brown fades into red fades into soft pink, nothing left but a bud sheathed in green leaves. 

Nothing is permanent, save the ragged ends of her cloak and the hard blue of her eyes. She steps turns into walks turns into runs, and she does not stop, because after so long there is nothing to return to. 

She watches the Guardians of the Tower, sometimes, takes an interest in the Exos there, their odd ways of coping, forgetting and remembering and continuing on, marking their pasts and changing their names even though there’s no reason to, not anymore. 

A step, and a 44 becomes a 20, a 10, an Exo so new they’re still trying to cling to some scrap of humanity, trying to be afraid even if none of them were programmed for anything but rage. Another step, and a 44 becomes a 45, hawking wares in an open field, muttering. Above, the sky is black clouds and angry fire. 

She walks and time melts where it touches her, because after this long how else is it supposed to treat her? She has no name and a past she cannot remember, just like the rest of them. She is not a Guardian but she is a war machine just as they are. Sometimes she watches that first great battle unfold, Exos marching in uniform columns, the Traveler still hanging in the sky above like it is a promise and not a wounded animal. 

When she begins her journey her age has already been lost to history but she feels too young, sometimes. She understands her rifle, the straight path of a bullet, but time bends and branches and loops, a great tree left to grow as it pleases. Below it, a garden of red blooms. 

This is how she understands: she finds the gardeners. 

The Vex are dark but their technology isn’t, and she tears into it ravenously, staining her gloves with radiolaria, littering her path with bronze. She steps and they step, too, and she follows, learns where and when they go. 

When the Vex have nothing left to teach her she stops watching their trails, starts looking to see where the others lead. The Vault is where all lines converge, and she slows to watch, sees the past and present and future of a million timelines, a billion worlds. 

There is Light hiding here and she circles until it fades, eventually, keeping logs that she knows serve little purpose except to remind her that she has existed somewhere, sometime. She causes ripples across time and feels the Light flickering, dying out. A new Light takes its place. 

A Light that does not dim. 

Interesting, she thinks, and steps backwards, winds her way through the Cosmodrome. She passes nervous colonists, excited children, desperate hordes of terrified people all clamoring to board the colony ships. The snow on the ground melts and falls again. Red wires snake across the ground until she nears them, and then they fade into the dirt. 

The Light awakens and steals a ship and flies away, burning. She stands on a rusting-brand-new-destroyed building and watches them go. 

This is the start of something new, she knows, and so she follows, curious. She has seen Warminds and aliens and the Darkness itself ravaging these worlds, and yet she has never seen someone like this. 

Her logs are an anchor as she trails behind, stepping into alternate timelines, watching, straining under the weight of a million pasts and a billion futures. She finds a nice outcrop of rock and watches the Light vanish into the Moon, chasing the Shard-Crota-Oryx. After, she stays until six nervous Guardians come to stand before the door, burning with anger and vengeance and hunger. 

The chase- and is it a chase, is she the hunter or hunted?- takes her to Venus. She walks ahead of herself, sends a message to the Moon. The Vex try and chase her out of their timestreams but she is faster than them, now, too quick and clever, too old. The Light burns through their brassy shells and she stops, allows herself a hum of satisfaction: yes, this one is interesting. 

She moves too quickly for answers, and the Light-bearer does not appreciate her half-truths. She is young, veins full of crackling Arc and undiscovered promise, Hunter-sure and Hunter-wary. She does not like to talk, and the Stranger- such a strange nickname, or maybe name, now- can understand. After she learned to step she did not speak for three centuries, and the first time she tried her voice came out as static and code. 

The her that walked ahead comes back, faceplate half broken, eyelights dim. Her comms overflow with desperate yelling, the soldiers of a long-ago war still unaware of their fate. She swears, tells the Light to find the Garden, and leaves, splitting across a million timelines to find the best one. 

One takes her to the Tower, its great spire broken, its City scattered. Another takes her to a Golden-Age research lab, full of old coffee cups and brassy Vex technology. And one- 

She stands in the hangar bay, rifle at her side. The evening light colors the Traveler pink, its torn-open underbelly a soft grey. 

The Hunter approaches, boots silent on the concrete floor, Ghost hovering nervously above her shoulder. An Awoken, she notices. At least one of them has chosen a side in this great war between light and dark. 

She cannot stay but this is the end of a long chapter, so she offers her rifle, soft yellow paint and delicate loops of wire. They will both see it again, or at least something like it. They might see each other again, in the future or in the sprawling network of pasts. Maybe they will save each other, or kill each other, or miss each other completely. 

She thinks of the Tower alight and wreathed in flame. A Hunter falling from a Cabal warship. World-eaters and death-killers. 

Who will prevail, she wonders, and then bites back a laugh because they will all know, in time, and she is made of time or as close as she can be. A million answers in a single step, and a million steps in front of her. 

The Exo Stranger leaves because she does not stop because there is nowhere for her to return to. Suddenly, this feels less like a burden and more like a promise.

**Author's Note:**

> finished up this thing from june because i miss the stranger, dang it 
> 
> also: hey, i finally put one of my guardians in a fic! her name is luana and she's very good. 
> 
> thanks for reading! <3 comments appreciated, as always.


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